LCA 2011 to go ahead, venue changed

UPDATED The 12th Australian national Linux conference, scheduled to be held in Brisbane from January 24 to 28, will go ahead as planned, chief organiser Shaun Nykvist announced last night. The venue for the main conference has, however, been changed.

There was some doubt over the holding of the conference due to the floods that have hit Brisbane and other parts of Queensland over the last three weeks. Nykvist and his fellow organisers had, thus, asked delegates to wait until Monday (January 17) for a final decision.

The venue of the conference has been shifted to the Kelvin Grove campus of the Queensland University of Technology

The change was necessitated by flood damage to the original venue, the Gardens Point campus of the same university.

"Since the floods we have made contact with people from the venues that we are using, the suggested accommodation places and the premier's office," Nykvist told iTWire when the decision to go ahead with the conference was taken.

"The conversation with the premier's office was extremely positive when we talked about continuing to run a conference here in Brisbane following the floods.

"We have also had some communication with the Lord Mayor's Office. The team has spent much time trying to work through the logistics of trying to ensure that LCA2011 could go ahead as planned though some changes are being made to our original plans and we will be keeping the community updated about these as they occur.

"It is too early at this stage to say what these changes are as we are still waiting for feedback from various places."

In his announcement on the LCA's mailing list, Nykvist assured delegates that the water in Brisbane was drinkable and that the city had not run out of food - though, understandably, some restaurants would have a limited menu.

"The team encourages everyone to still come to Brisbane and support local business and the community - we need your support!"

Any changes in venues will be announced by tomorrow (Wednesday, January 19) evening.

Linux Australia president John Ferlito told iTWire that the LCA21011 organising team had conferred with its officials before deciding on holding the conference.

"From the (Linux Australia) council's point of view this allayed our concerns that we would pose a negative impact on Brisbane," he said.

"I hope that by continuing to hold the conference we are helping to send a strong message that the city of Brisbane is indeed open for business and is on the way to recovering from this natural disaster."

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A professional journalist with decades of experience, Sam for nine years used DOS and then Windows, which led him to start experimenting with GNU/Linux in 1998. Since then he has written widely about the use of both free and open source software, and the people behind the code. His personal blog is titled Irregular Expression.